Science Fiction at Scribd
Scribd.com is to ebooks and audiobooks what Netflix is to movies and television shows, and Spotify is to songs and albums, and Texture is to magazines. Don’t compare Scribd to Kindle Unlimited because Amazon’s electronic library subscription service is very limited compared to Scribd. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible doesn’t want to offer rentals that compete with its sales.
Over the past decade, there have been a number of online subscription libraries. Many have gone under. Scribd has tweaked it’s service a number of times to stay in business. Scribd really competes with your library’s electronic offerings, but instead of waiting in line for that free audiobook or ebook, you can have what you want immediately.
Scribd is $8.99 a month for an all the books you can read with your eyes or ears. Its library is very large, but nothing like the giant sizes of Audible or Amazon. However, its library is impressively large and I consider the $8.99 I spend every month a tremendous bargain. I still buy 24 books a year at Audible, because I do want to own audiobooks. I also buy tons of books at Amazon and ABEbooks. I also use my library regularly. But Scribd is letting me buy less and borrow less. I’m in three nonfiction book clubs and one science fiction book club, and I’m surprised by how often the books voted in are available at Scribd. I’ve saved tons of money.
But here’s a couple tests to see how Scribd does with new science fiction. I’m going to reprint the Best of 2018 lists for science fiction from two sites and color the titles that are available at Scribd. Scrid has a mix of ebook and audiobooks. Red for ebooks, blue for audio, or both colors for both formats.
The 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2018 – Chicago Review of Books
- Mem by Bethany C. Morrow
- The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
- Semiosis by Sue Burke
- Severance by Ling Ma
- Rosewater by Tade Thompson
- The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Black Star Renegades by Michael Moreci
- Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
- State Tectonics by Malka Older
- The Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer
Not bad, huh? Let’s try to make it a little harder.
Goodreads Choice Awards 2018 – Science Fiction
- Vengeful by V. E. Schwab
- Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
- Vox by Christina Dalcher
- Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
- Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
- Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
- Persepolis Rising James S. A. Corey
- Artificial Conditions by Martha Wells
- The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
- Head On by John Scalzi
- Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
- Star Wars: Thrawn Alliances by Timothy Zahn
- Severance by Ling Ma
- The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Rosewater by Tade Thompson
- Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu
- Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
- The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
- Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
- The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi
I think I have more than made my point. I’ve also revealed a secondary bit of knowledge. Most of the books are on audible, and not as ebooks. I wonder why? Maybe publishers think readers want to own books, but audiobooks are a rental kind of thing. Who knows. But I believe I’ve made a good case for subscribing to Scribd if you love audiobooks. However, there are plenty of science fiction ebooks to read. Maybe they focus on the older titles for that format.
The results also make me wonder something else. Are the people who pick the best books of the year partial to audiobooks?
To me, it’s worth $8.99 a month to just try out all these new science fiction books.
JWH
Buying Science Fiction: Paper or Digital?
At my blog, Auxiliary Memory, I’ve been adding Amazon Affiliate links to all the various lists of science fiction books I’ve created. This tedious activity is quite informative. The most obvious trend I spotted, is we’re moving away from mass market paperbacks. They still exist, but far fewer in number. How many people are buying them? Even more surprising is how often I see a mass market paperback cheaper than the Kindle edition. A common price is $7.99 for the ebook, and $7.19 for the mass market paperback. And if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, the price of shipping is built into the paper price. Are they encouraging people to keep buying paperbacks? Or, are ebook prices fixed, and Amazon is discounting the paper?
On the other hand, many classic science fiction novels are only available in Kindle editions, or Kindle and Audible editions, so the only choice is digital. And the prices for Kindle ebook editions are all over the map. Currently, you can get many of Greg Egan’s great novels from the 1990s for $2.99 each. But other books from that era go for $7.99, $9.99, $11.99 or even $13.99. I can’t believe they price older ebooks equal to cheaper trade paperback editions. But then, the prices for trade paperbacks are moving closer to what hardbacks were not many years ago, and the prices of hardbacks are soaring.
I found it quite disturbing how many books are only available in digital. My all-time favorite science fiction novel, Have Space Suit-Will Travel can only be bought in an ebook or audio editions. The Kindle is $6.99. Several of Heinlein’s books are only available in these formats. Does that mean fewer people are reading Heinlein? Or, do his fans prefer digital editions? I can understand the flood of forgotten novels from decades past having only Kindle editions. I doubt there are enough buyers to make a print edition break even. And ebooks have been wonderful for bringing back classic SF long out of print. Recently most of Clifford Simak’s novels and short stories showed up in new digital editions.
I tend to think pricing for ebooks is related to the fame of the book or author. Dune, a classic from the 1960s, goes for $9.99. The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson, from the 1990s goes for $11.99. In the old days, age meant cheap paper editions. I remember buying pocket books costing 35 cents off of twirling wire racks when I was a kid. It’s hard to imagine children plunking down $10 for a Sci-Fi wonder today.
Since I’m adding Amazon Affiliate links I have to decide which is the edition people will most likely want. For the most part, I’ve settle on Kindle editions because they are often cheaper compared to trade paper editions, the common print format. If you consume science fiction versus collecting it, going digital is more thrifty. Digital also seems science fictional too, but I do know that many people still prefer to read off of paper. And I have to wonder how many people prefer spending $14.95 for a trade edition over $7.99 to read a Kindle edition?
I would love to know: how many people still collect science fiction in hardback?
Since I’m adding links to the Classics of Science Fiction list, I’m assuming most people are going through the list reading the classics, and not collecting. I’ve been building my own digital library of the Classics of Science Fiction list on the cheap. The Kindle Daily Deals, BookBub, Early Bird Books and LitFlash all send me daily reminders of ebook specials. I’ve bought dozens of books from the Classics of Science Fiction list for $1.99 each. I’m still kicking myself for not buying Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick and Blood Music by Greg Bear from yesterday’s deals. I saw the emails and thought, “I’ll do that in a minute,” and then forget. Damn. Today they are $6.15 and $7.99. Jack Faust has no paper edition, and Blood Music is $13.99 for the trade paper. Although you can get a used hardback copy for $0.01 and $3.99 shipping.
Most of my science fiction collection is digital now, either Kindle or Audible. I only buy paper if it’s much cheaper, the only available format, or I can’t get it from the library. In this regard, I know I’m atypical. I think most science fiction fans prefer to build large collections of visible books. Yet, is that practical with the rising cost of printed books?
I’ve committed to digital. All my Kindle and Audible books are available on my iPhone, which goes with me everywhere. That’s rather futuristic, because I’m carrying around a couple thousand books in my pocket. In the past, when I moved and loaded 2,000+ books in boxes into a truck, it was a huge pain in the lower back. It’s hard to believe I now carry that many books with me everywhere I go.
Ben Bova for the UK
WWEnd monitors Amazon’s Daily Deals, and if we see a good deal on SF/F/H books, we usually tweet it. Sometimes, we see one that is so good, it’s blog worthy. Today’s UK deal is one of those. If you live in the United Kingdom, you can get any of five Ben Bova novels for £0.99 each.
Four of these books are part of the Grand Tour series. They’re pretty much random volumes, so it’s a good thing they were meant to be read in no particular order. Here they are:
Mars
Moonwar
Return to Mars
Moonrise
The fifth book, Voyagers III, is part of the Voyagers series, which probably will require reading the first two books.
Snag a Hugo nominated novel in this crazy two-fer deal!
By the way, when I got our Leviathan Wakes bookmark signed by both authors at last year’s Worldcon, I had one sign James and the other sign Corey. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one with that signature (at least they told me I was the first who asked for it that way). Have I just ruined my unique status by letting that slip? Damnit.
New E-Books from Clarke, Wolfe, and Foster
In discussions of the pros and cons of e-books, supporters of the growing shift toward electronic readers cite the convenience of e-readers and tablets, the ability to instantly download a new book when browsing an online store, and the cost-free virtual (and virtually unlimited) shelf space. Personally, the ability to accumulate more books without reaching the point of needing to add another room to the house in order to store them is a fantastic development.
But, to my mind, by far the largest boon of the e-book revolution is the way it has made available previously out-of-print backlists of a large number of authors that would have been unlikely to make it back into print as physical books, due to the economics of books publishing, and publishers’ increasing unwillingness to keep marginally profitable “midlist” writers works’ in print. Major publishers have slowly gotten into the act with digital reprints of the books they have rights to, but there also an increasing number of authors (or authors’ estates), the rights to whose backlists have reverted to them, who have taken the opportunity to arrange for digital reissues. Back catalogues that have appeared for the first time or been added to in the last few months include:
Where to Find DRM-Free eBooks, and Why It’s Worth the Effort
A couple of weeks back, Rico penned a post saying goodbye to eBook DRM (digital rights management), following Tor Books’ announcement that it had extended its new no-DRM policy worldwide. The common sense arguments against DRM are laid out in that post, but, despite Tor’s decision, the brave new world of DRM-free eBooks isn’t quite here yet. Many authors and smaller publishers are embracing DRM-free books, but the big publishers and the major eBook retailers are still resistant.
This is not surprising, since an important profit-making strategy for large corporations is to restrict competition, and that is exactly what DRM does. It’s well known by this point that DRM does not prevent digital piracy—the argument usually made for it. What it does is prevent book buyers from moving their files across reading platforms. From a publisher perspective, this could increase profits by increasing the chance that some readers will end up re-buying books in the future, if they ever want to switch to a different reader, or somehow lose access to the account their books are attached to. It makes even more sense from the perspective of Amazon and Barnes and Noble, the major book retailers and producers of the two top e-readers. If you’ve already bought a hundred eBooks from Amazon, and you can’t read them on a Nook or a Sony Reader, you will feel locked into continuing to use the Kindle, even if a competing e-reader comes along that you’d like to switch to. And if you stick with the Kindle, you won’t be buying books from Barnes and Noble or any other DRM-restricted e-bookstore.
There are advantages to staying with a particular eBook “ecosystem.” Amazon makes a great e-reader, can sell you just about any eBook that’s available, and is very easy to use. Barnes and Noble can make similar claims. But whichever you choose, you’re pretty much stuck with that company (or whoever buys it out in the future) forever. And, for the moment, the big publishers are determined to “double down” on DRM, as Cory Doctorow describes here. Hatchette Book Group is trying to force its authors to sign contracts requiring them to make sure that any books they publish, even when published through other publishers, contain DRM. An author who has published with Hatchette and Tor, according to Doctorow, has received a letter pressuring the author to ensure that Tor does not remove the DRM from the author’s Tor books. It seems clear that these companies are not going to give up easily.